Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Kindergarten Round Up: It’s Not What It Used To Be

by Kathleen Jeskey

Last year, Oregon implemented a sort of kindergarten entrance
exam: an assessment designed to determine each child’s “readiness”for
kindergarten. One small part of the assessment consists of a one minute test on
the child’s ability to identify approximately 65 letter symbols by
name or sound. When three reporters from The Oregonian attempted this, none of
the three were able to complete more than 50 of the 65 in the time allotted.
Their confidence as adults and writers seemed to be unshaken by this
experience, as they were okay with it being published in the newspaper.

I’m worried. Lots of kids start
kindergarten next year and I’m not sure they’re all quite as
mature and self assured as newspaper reporters. The news that they aren’t
“ready”for kindergarten on the very first day
of school (let alone on track for “college and career”)
might be a little daunting.And I’m
not worrying by myself. Many people who are well respected in the field of education are also worried about what all this “readiness”testing
means, not only for kindergarten but for “college and career”.

I have a grandson who starts kindergarten this fall. My grandson has great self
confidence. This is a kid who lives in the country and collects eggs from under
live chickens. He plays outside and runs around with two enormous German
shepherds, each of which probably outweigh him by double. He sleeps in a
tree house sometimes. But as a teacher who has seen what happens when kids fail
assessments, I’m not sure even this little superhero’s self esteem will
survive the gauntlet of tests he’s about to be subjected to. I’m
even less sure his love of school and reading and learning will survive. Again,
I’m not worrying alone.

My daughter and son-in-law have done much to instill self
confidence in this little guy. They allow him to try things, to fail, and to
try again. They give help when he needs it, unlike what will happen in the
state kindergarten assessment. Teachers are not allowed to help and answer
questions during the administration of a standardized test. It is standardized,
with standardized responses that administrators of the assessment (aka your
children’s teachers) are allowed to respond to questions with. In
fact, administrators must sign a document stating they will follow all the
regulations outlined for administering the assessment or risk disciplinary
action up to and including the loss of their teaching license. This is the same
kind of agreement that every teacher must sign prior to administering a standardized test in Oregon.

I know a lot of parents are considering opting their children out of standardized testing, including the kindergarten assessment (see Oregon Opt Your Kindergartener Now--September 2014 Facebook page here). These are
parents who don’t tend to let their little kids try
things that might hurt them, like driving a car. As in the case ofdriving, these parents consider the
assessments potentially damaging at this point in their child’s
life and better saved for a time when they have had a chance to develop skills
and maturity. A number of groups dedicated to the education of young children
feel the same. Parent Child Preschools Organization, an organization of over 60
preschools in Oregon and Washington sent a letter to all parents participating
in their preschool programs at the end of last year stating that the Oregon
Kindergarten Assessment is not a good thing for children entering kindergarten.
You can find that letter here:(Click on “Oregon Kindergarten Assessment.)The Alliance for Childhood is not only worried about giving
our youngest students standardized tests, they have been worried for some time about the standards themselves.

But there’s a lot of pressure. I have a friend
who’d like to opt her child out of testing, but she’s
worried about doing it. She knows that there are schools that are suffering
because they don’t have very good
test scores: schools that
have large concentrations of poor, minority or non-English speaking students,
who typically don’t score as well on standardized tests
as the kids at her mostly white, all English speaking, middle class school do.
She thinks the tests don’t mean much and she really wants to
help stop the unfair practices that are being used to bring about
privatization, closing public schools and opening in their place for profit
charters, in many of America’s cities. The problem is, she was a
good student herself and she wants to follow the school rules. She worries the
school may tell her that if she opts her child out, it will hurt her child’s
school, maybe lower its state ranking. Her school has a very good state
ranking. Their school community is very proud of that. She doesn’t
want to have the people at her school upset with her. Besides, she thinks her
child will probably pass anyway and if not, her kid has plenty of self esteem
and won’t be affected by this one little test.

Lots of parents will feel this pressure. My hope is that they
will consider all the data that is now being collected on their children at a
level far above that of the local school, beginning on their child’s
first day of kindergarten. My hope is that they will consider asking questions
like “Who is using this data?”and
“Where is this data stored?”and
“Can I get access to my child’s data that is
stored from the state at any time, now or in the future?”You
can learn more about data privacy concerns hereand here.

I also hope that parents who aren’t worried about their children’s
self esteem will choose to stand in solidarity with those parents whose
children’s self worth is being damaged when they do not pass the
tests. I hope that will stand in solidarity with parents of children who struggle
to pass a standardized test: children with disabilities, children who are not
yet proficient in English, children against whom the test is culturally biased,
or children who live in poverty. Poverty and getting low test scores have a really high rate of correlation.

I hope that parents who want to maintain the standing of their
school in the community stand in solidarity with those parents who live in
neighborhoods that have a high concentration of immigrant families or children
who live in poverty, whose schools will always struggle to get a high rating if
that rating is based on scores on a standardized test. In many areas of the
country, those children’s neighborhood schools are being
closed based on standardized test scores.I hope that they will stand in solidarity with the children whose
self esteem and skills are not in tact when they first arrive at school due to
neglect or abuse at home.

Kindergarten teachers are professionals who can assess children in a kind and
sensitive manner without having their responses scripted. While our state and
federal government may have an interest in a well educated populace and a
responsibility to ensure equity in our schools, it is ultimately the parents
who have the right to make decisions about what and how their children learn.
This iswhat real “school
choice”would consist of: letting parents whose children attend
their local public school choose, in a democratic fashion, how that school is
run. We should let parents decide whether they would prefer their child to have
a standardized education or a humanized education. Parents should decide
whether they want a kindergarten classroom designed around experiential
learning and research on child development or standardized evaluations and
reportable data that proven to have little to no effect on educational
outcomes.

Parents should not feel pressured or bullied by their school to participate in
standardized testing. The state shouldn’t be pressuring and bullying schools
and teachers to participate in standardized testing.

Since I don’t teach kindergarten, I wanted to
include the voice of someone who’s taught kindergarten for many
years.She doesn’t
like the the tests nor the requirement that they be given right away.She says that she learned through
experience that it was better to wait until a couple weeks into the school year
to do any kind of formal assessment with her students. About the quality of the
new assessments she says, “I hate the whole thing as it is a
waste of my teacher time and in my opinion, the data is not valid due to how
poorly the questions are set up and scored.And
the behavior piece is another whole kettle of fish.”Many
years ago, she gave her own assessments at that first parent/child meeting but
learned through experience that this was not a good idea: “I
found that students were shy and afraid the first few days, especially some of
my Latino students, and often wouldn't talk.As
a result the information was often incorrect.It
wasn't they didn't know their colors, they just weren't confident enough to
talk to you.The final straw for me was when (my son) started
kinder. He is now 16!We went for
a pre-k meeting with the teacher and at that meeting she did her beginning of
kinder screening.My late bloomer didn't know his ABCs.
All he wanted to do was build with Legos and blocks (go figure for a 5 year
old). He didn't write his name, but had an amazing vocabulary…
etc. etc.At the end of the meeting I felt shamed about what my kid
didn't know and that this teacher didn't see any of his strengths and school
hadn't even started yet!!I swore I would not make another
parent or child feel like that starting kinder, their first school experience.That
was when I moved all my assessing a couple of weeks into the year and used the
beginning of school meeting to talk to the parent about their child's
strengths, concerns, any info I should know.Now
we are back to creating the negative interaction I swore to avoid.UGH!”